


Armor

by truethingsproved



Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: The Problem of Susan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-29
Updated: 2015-01-29
Packaged: 2018-03-09 12:58:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3250541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/truethingsproved/pseuds/truethingsproved
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She stands at their graves wearing dark lipstick, and she does not weep. She had been banished, and so she had moved on—and again, she was punished for it, left behind so that her clockwork heart could beat out her punishment, day in, day out. Because if Aslan would not accept her, then she would not seek him out, and so he left her abandoned and alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Armor

_ The Queen who never was, _  they call her, though she remembers another title she once wore, she remembers another promise that had wrapped itself around her spine.

                        Once a King or Queen of Narnia,  **always**  a King or Queen  
                        of Narnia. Hadn’t that been what she’d been promised?

The girl made queen, the woman made girl, all of the years and the growth and the change swimming in her adolescent body when she’d been thrust back into a war-torn world. Queen Susan the Gentle, she’d been, Susan who would never harm a soul, Susan who refused to wed a man bent on war. While Lucy had tried to make herself  _one of the boys,_  to remove herself from her womanhood, Susan had embraced hers, made hers not into a weapon but a shield. 

Susan, who would stop wars by walking into a battlefield herself, palms held out before her, upturned and empty, to show that she meant no ill will.  _This is no place for a Queen,_ her people had argued, but what better place is there for a queen but between her people and the blades held to their throats?

Susan, who would only raise her bow when all else failed, who did not rejoice in the killing as her siblings did. Susan, who dreamed of a husband, of a child in her belly and a life filled to the brim, who felt at ease with the thought of dying old and in her bed.

Susan, who was ripped from her life and her womanhood, thrust back into girlhood, forced from her peace into a war she couldn’t comprehend. Forced to await the return of a father she had long since mourned, mocked for the formality of her speech. Susan, who had held Lucy when she’d wept over how desperately she’d missed her faun, who had stroked Edmund’s hair back when he tucked himself into her side and closed his eyes, remembering Jadis and what she’d done, who had placed a gentle hand on Peter’s shoulders as they shook while he watched his country torn to pieces.

Susan, who was never allowed to grieve.

Her limbs were shorter and her hair was unkempt; the beautiful woman-queen was a girl-child again, even as she felt the ache of a ride, the longing for a world she would never find again. And when they were drawn back into Narnia, into a land ravaged by time and conquest, the lion was not there.

The lion had abandoned them—the queenmaker had left his queens to be devoured by war and wilderness. And Susan the Gentle watched her sister and brothers prepare to make war in a land they no longer knew, determined to keep them alive once more, knowing the blood that would have to be shed to make it so.

And when the lion kept himself hidden, demanded that the youngest lead her siblings into death, she refused, because she, too, had once been a queen. And once a Queen of Narnia, always a Queen of Narnia, isn’t that how it goes? Shouldn’t they have held council, as they once had? Was she truly meant to blind herself to truth for the sake of appeasing a god that had abandoned them once already?

                 And he’d made her apologize, too, that was the worst of it.  
                 He’d scolded her like a child for being the only one to say  
                 no, for exercising the choice he had groomed in her.

_Aslan, can we stay?_  
                                                       No, my children, you must go home.  
                                               _Aslan, can we come back?_

                                                       He looked at Susan as if she were pestilence.

                                                       No. No,  **you**  may not.

She stands at their graves wearing dark lipstick, and she does not weep. She had been banished, and so she had moved on—and again, she was punished for it, left behind so that her clockwork heart could beat out her punishment, day in, day out. Because if Aslan would not accept her, then she would not seek him out, and so he left her abandoned and alone.

           She dreams of him, screams  _ **why, why,**_ ** _why_ ,**   
                  and he answers,  _because you turned from me._

                               But YOU are the one who turned your back on ME.

He has bled the gentleness from her. He has stripped her of her identity time and time again, made a queen solely to break her. For the first time, she understands why Jadis would do what she had done. For the first time, she wishes that he had died on that damned stone table.

                     Tonight she will dream of him again. And tonight, she will hunt.  
                   She is a  _queen_ _,_ after all, and she will wear the lion’s pelt as armor.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry about the weird-ass formatting; I pulled this drabble from one of my RP blogs and couldn't be bothered to redo my formatting/HTML. 
> 
> "What are you most angry about, Ani?" "Well, I'm still not over what CS Lewis did to Susan."
> 
> Come find me on tumblr, at susanspevensie!


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